pykonstar

Ah, The Wedding of River Song, how you did delight, from just those first opening minutes, setting the scene of a time created by "A Woman" (Moffhead trademark excuse for outlandish and overemotional behaviour) with powerful Stuff Going On music, and pterodactyls, mammoths (sadly unseen) and floating cars powered by helium balloons.

So, because I refuse to be drawn into a long debate about fixed points in time and Tesselectas on forums, I am just going to answer the casual reader and viewer questions here, while also deriding you for NOT PAYING ATTENTION, because when you watch Moffhead's Who, YOU HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION!

Question 1: "Blah blah blah, I'm seventeen, and despite seeing other peoples answers to this question countless times, because they are not answers I want which confirm my OBVIOUSLY CORRECT way of thinking, I'm going to ask it again as if none of that ever happened:

Nerr, how come the Tesselecta can regenerate?

Ok, this is a robot with a Woman from Catherine Tate (Y'know, that one who has to guess stuff in an office) who's entire job it is to make sure it's skin is the right colour, and can produce a motorbike from between it's pretend legs. It can fake an aborted regeneration people. STOP ASKING

Nerr, how come if Melody killing The Doctor is a fixed point in time, The Doctor tricked it by being in a Tesselecta?

Ok, I will only say this once. Not in a french accent, but in capitals, which signifies that I really, really mean it.

MELODY. SHOOTING. THE. TESSELECTA. WITH. THE. DOCTOR. INSIDE. IS. A. FIXED. POINT. IN. TIME.

You'll notice the use of full stops between each word. This means it is definitely true and that I am not to be argued with because I am a massive troll sent to wind up forum posters without ever posting. I just judge you instead. 

to clarify:

The Doctor went to see Dorium's Head, left him in the Tardis while he went to see Tesselecta impersonating some scottish guy from the Silence, and asked them could he go in the Tesselecta and pretend to die so the Silence and lots of other people think it really happened. They said yes and promised to keep it a secret, and then The Doctor and Dorium's Head popped into the Tesselecta in the Tardis and went to Lake Silencio where Melody refused to kill him and then did a fantastic impression of Hermione Granger saying that Fixed Points Can Be Rewritten, and then got immediately proved wrong and transported to 5:02 Land. For his whole time spent in this Land, The Doctor is in the Tesselecta. Which is why when The Tesselecta and River touch, they react as the two poles of the event and start time moving again. 

Just to prove how TOTALLY IMPORTANT River Song is, this whole world is created purely for her by The Universe, just so The Doctor can finally see her and say "Look into my eye" and then she can be all, like, "Oh, OK, so I can shoot you. I guess I'm going to go to prison and stuff but that doesn't matter because I'm already a doctor of archeology and you'll come and visit me all the time, right? RIGHT?"

So then Melody shoots The Tesselecta Which Contains The Doctor, and then for some reason The Doctor takes Dorium's Head back to that place where the heads are whilst wearing a cloak. I guess so no-one else sees him. And then we find out what The Question is. Lovely.

What I am actually having trouble with, is at what point in the sequence of events are River, Rory and Amy taken from to live in 5:02 Land? The River there is more like the River from The Impossible Astronaut than the Melody Pond they took after getting her degree, and after 5:02 land the Amy we see knows the Doctor is dead now. It's almost like The Universe took River from The Impossible Astronaut and Amy and Rory from Closing Time (After The Doctor has dropped them off at their Random New House) so that it would make the most sense to them and us. It's even possible that The Universe brought both Melody and River from The Impossible Astronaut and merged them, so that she still has the incredibly emotional refusal to shoot the Doctor, but the knowledge of more to do what she does with the message. Even as I write this I've decided I'm wrong, and that it's just Melody, she cites being The Child of the Tardis as the reason she can build the message. River from The Impossible Astronaut has already experienced these events, so she experiences them without 5:02 Land this time, and just has to pretend she didn't do it.

SEE WHAT YOU DO TO US MOFFHEAD? 

I actually LOVED the episode, although I could have done without all the Churchill stuff and I want to understand the point of The Silence more, so hopefully that will happen next year. 

My BIG WORRY is that there is a possibility that River Song may not be back next year, because she doesn't really do anything important any more. She's done all the big stuff. but I would like to see Melody's journey from New York to Leadworth. I've got a feeling that this may have something to do with Amy's exit from Who but time will tell.

I felt exceptionally proud of Amy when she put Kovarian's iPatch back on (Despite it being on one second, and hanging off the next because Moffhead wasn't sure if he wanted Amy to kill her). It was a beautiful passive aggressive nod to a previously unemotional response to her "Daugh-er" being kidnapped forever. My pride in her went further when she told River how guilty she felt.

What made me feel bad was poor Rory, despite being a time travelling grown up warrior now compared to the Sort-of Boyfriend Loser Nurse we saw in The Eleventh Hour, not being permitted by The Universe to remember his adventures. River remembered because she is The Child of the Tardis, Amy remembered because of The Crack in her Wall, but Rory who travelled the universe dressed as a centurion and waited by a box for two thousand years was not granted such powers. I think he has become the Meg, and that Moffhead secretly hates him. Maybe his middle name is Kenny.

THAT Moff! Not only is he keeping me awake and excited about finding out all about River Song tomorrow night, he pokes fun at me whilst watching reruns of Who and Coupling.

Aah moments include:

GERONIMO! The Doctor's "catchphrase", and something someone exclaimed upon *ahem* entering, in Coupling.

GOTCHA! The Doctor says this to Amy in The Big Bang as she sheds a tear for him, while Susan teases Steve with the same word after his confession that he wouldn't object to marrying her.

REPEATED PHRASES THAT SOUND LIKE THEY MEAN A THING BUT MEAN A DIFFERENT THING!

"Donna Noble has been SAVED"

"Are you my Mummy?"

"Silence will fall!" (Well, actually, we don't really know if it means a different thing yet.)

LITTLE GIRLS

Disregarding the obvious molesty wolesty-ness of that, Old Moffhead likes including little girls. Reinette was young, then became River Song's natural test run during The Girl in The Fireplace, Nancy was but a little girl with a be-gasmasked son in The Doctor Dances, CAL was a little girl with too much to do in Silence in The Library, and for good measure, Jane borrowed a dress from a little girl in Coupling, when she accidentally went to a dinner party naked.

THE BLAH WHO/WITH/ BLAH BLAH/BLAHED

The Girl Who Waited, The Woman with Two Breasts, The Man with Two Legs. It almost seems like Moffat thought of random phrases and then made characters and episodes out of them. And good for him. It mainly worked. And doesn't it make stuff sound like a fairytale?

WOMEN IN CHARGE

Moffat has clearly been dominated by women. Or maybe he likes them to think he has. In Coupling, the woman are sexual, forceful, amazonian goddesses who have men all summed up, whilst the men come nowhere close to having the women summed up, but a pleasant turn of nature, have the one thing they desire. Penises. Amy Pond clearly has the upper hand over Rory, but during his stay on Who he has grown from nervous, dominated Rory to A Good Man, who will cross the galaxies and look as ridiculous as possible for his wife and child.

NO OFFENCE BUT...

This is obviously a pet hate of Moffhead (I like that nickname, it makes me think of his fuzzy, fluffy hair) as it is referenced in both shows, with the response that quite a lot was taken actually.

GOD

It is a mere possibility that our Scottish friend thinks that God is a bit rubbish. Jane voices this when she proclaims him to be non-existent during an accidental christian group in Coupling, while the church apparently has developed into a military operation in the 52nd century over in the Whoniverse. Moff either laughs quite a lot at God or has more access to his future plans than most.

BASICALLY and APPARENTLY

This one is a bit tenuous. Apparently is Susan's word of choice whenever angry (And delivered with all the passive aggression it deserves by Sarah Alexander), while Steven has dispelled some of my hatred for the word "Basically" by following it with the word "Run" wherever possible in Who. Clearly there's no link there, just quite a long sentence. Not really worth mentioning but isn't that what blogs are FOR?

REAL LIFE NOT BEING TERRIBLY IMPORTANT

In Coupling, we don't know what anyone's job is unless it becomes relevant to the plot. I enjoy this, it puts to shame TV shows where you have to know people's jobs, and that's what the show is about. Like The Good Wife, which is just an excuse to write ANOTHER SHOW ABOUT LAWYERS with an imprisoned Mr Big (For crimes against Carrie?) as a politician or something thrown in for good measure.

You only find out Jane is a Traffic Helicopter Woman (Obviously that is the official job title) When she gets sacked, and Sally is a Beautician because the girls needed a salon to go late at night and that's where a lot of Sally's humour comes from. In fact, the more you see Sally, the more you realise that it's the only job she could ever do. The others seem to work in nondescript expensive looking offices with lots of lovely glass and stationery.

In who, all this namby-pamby time consuming fleshing out is shed in favour of plot, which a lot of certain forum posters take issue with, but personally I find quite exciting. Moff's trademark method of storytelling is very logical, so why would he tell us something about our characters if we didn't NEED to know it? Hell, we only know Amy used to be a Strippogram because the plot called for it. We only know Rory is a nurse because they ended up in a hospital during The Eleventh Hour, We only really know anything about Amy's parents because they didn't exist for quite some time. Only what is necessary is given to us, which means we are credited with some intelligence as viewers, and can fill in gaps ourselves. Moff's quick fire information dumps replace minutes of valuable television so quickly that you can pat yourself on the back (Afterwards, when there's time) for ticking all the answer boxes. Let's Kill Hitler was one of the most bizarre, information-tastic episodes of Who in such a long time I watched it repeatedly, revelling in the glory of newly regenerated Melody, simply TELLING us what happened where other TV shows might have had a lovely flashback. Dots connected, carry on.

Moffat is telling fairytales. He's even telling modern ones in Coupling, and fairytales don't contain awful exposition-heavy paragraphs detailing the entire job history of the Princess BEFORE she sat on the pea. We should relax and wait for the answers, or at least dots, and then watch the episodes four times on repeat to get all the ones we missed previously.

HANDCUFFS

Jeff lost the keys to some, Amy got the doctor with some, River got the doctor with some, some guards got River with some, there'll be more. Moffat thinks cuffs are sexy and funny.

Speaking of SEXY and FUNNY, it's almost like Moff took Who from RTD, and said, "Look mate, you've been writing this a light-hearted drama for kids and adults alike, with a slight hint of tragedy. That's lovely, and thanks for not killing off Jenny like I asked you to, but from now on it's a Sitcom Fairytale with slight (hahahahahaha) hint of Time Travel. Off to LA with you and Barrowman, see ya!"

I like it. It makes me very happy. The sad thing is that I watched RTD seasons and enjoyed them all the way through (Except the one with wooden, "we wrote this story with Rose in mind, let's just change all the instances of "Rose" in the script to "Martha"), now I watch feeling a bit like if it's not an original Moff-penned episode I'm wasting my time. (Apart from The Doctor's Wife, that was beautiful.) But when they are Moff episodes, I feel like I'm being treated to an all over massage with a separate person for each foot while inhaling laughing gas. I never thought I would laugh so hard at the word "Jodhpurs!" In face, I once read that when David Walliams and Matt Lucas were filming Come Fly With Me, they would meticulously find, for instance, the funniest possible type of biscuit to use in a scene until it was as funny as it could be. That's how I feel about the word "Jodhpurs". I could say it all day, and hear Alex Kingston saying it in my mind. Although every time I hear it, I can imagine Jane Christie saying it too.